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The Dreams Of Ada Essay

612 Words3 Pages

Introduction "Justice doesn 't mean the bad guy goes to jail. It just means someone pays for the crime" (LaGravenese, 2007). This quote summarizes Robert Mayer 's The Dreams of Ada perfectly. Mayer 's book follows the true story of the investigation into, arrest, and trials of Karl Fontenot and Tommy Ward for the kidnapping and murder of Denice Haraway. In the end the two are convicted, although all evidence suggests otherwise. The police and prosecutors are blind to the truth of the situation: Fontenot and Ward are innocent, and, as explained in this report, there is no evidence to prove they committed the crime, and all evidence brought forward by the prosecution is flawed or incorrect. Corpus Delicti Corpus delicti is a Latin term that means "body of the crime". The term …show more content…

Despite this, the police still use them, as they do with Tommy Ward, when he goes to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) to prove to the law enforcement agents that he had nothing to do with Denice Haraway. Ward takes the test, but the results of the polygraph are never revealed. The agent (WHO???) tells Tommy that he failed the test, and whether or not this is true, the results mean nothing. If it were true that Tommy failed the test, it would not mean he had a hand in the crime; his failure could be attributed to the 40% error rate of polygraphs (Dowler, n.d.). On the other hand, if Ward did not fail the test, then the police lied to him in an attempt to get him to confess. What makes the use of the polygraph significant to Ward and Fontenot 's innocence is the role it played in the investigation. There are two options: either Ward truly failed the test, or the police lied to him to elicit a confession. Either way, there is no strong evidence that proves, or even indicates that Ward had anything to do with Denice Haraway. Despite the validity of the test, Ward 's polygraph was the key that unlocked the door to his Karl Fontenot 's

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